This paper describes a digital finance education campaign called “Hey Sister! Show Me the Mobile Money,” including efforts to make it easy to replicate from one geographical context to another. The program facilitates low-income women’s access to digital financial services (DFS) by addressing the challenges of affordability, availability, ability and appetite. The pilot program was run by the consultancy Strategic Impact Advisors (SIA) with the support of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Agent Network Strengthening program.
SIA launched “Hey, Sister!” in Ghana, Malawi and Uganda to address the relatively large gender gaps in DFS usage in those countries. The program includes: (1) 25 audio lessons, each of which lasts up to 4 minutes; (2) country-specific facilitation guides; and (3) train-the-trainer workshops. These resources address topics such as online privacy, scam prevention, budgeting, mobile money, insurance, savings and loans.
The program was hosted in various locations by SIA’s partner microfinance institutions and civil society organizations. Depending on the host organization’s preference and local infrastructure, the lessons were offered via interactive voice response (IVR) platforms, broadcasted by radio, posted on organizations’ websites or used for in-person discussion groups.
During the first year of the pilot, the campaign reached 260,000 people through IVR and in-person groups. Of these participants, approximately 188,000 were women. Women who attended facilitated group discussions reported the greatest impacts to their lives. Among the changes they cited were greater confidence in using mobile phones for financial transactions and an enhanced role in household decision-making.
Subsequently, the learning materials were translated into 17 languages and disseminated to organizations that work toward women’s economic empowerment in other countries in sub-Saharan Africa as well as in Latin America. These organizations were invited to customize the materials to their local contexts, such as by changing the currencies, character names and sample jobs cited in training scenarios.
Based on this experience, the authors recommend the following when replicating DFS educational content for women in different cultures: (1) design scripts based on scenarios that are highly relatable to everyday situations; (2) employ a product-agnostic policy in order to engage participants regardless of their financial behaviors and choices of financial services providers; and (3) be aware that some invited organizations might not be willing to use the content.
This is a summary of a paper published by USAID, September 2022, 10 pages, available at https://www.usaid.gov/digital-development/digital-finance-campaign-replication-guide.
By Renata Samedova and Saulius Simonas Ramanauskas, Research Associates
Additional Resources
USAID homepage
https://www.usaid.gov
SIA homepage
https://www.siaedge.com
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